1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure pertains in general to data communications, and more specifically to managing multiple input ports using a single signaling path and a control path.
2. Description of the Related Art
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a specification designed to protect digital content across various interfaces. A typical HDCP configuration includes HDCP transmitting devices (i.e., DVD player, HD DVD player, Blu-Ray player, computer video cards, etc.) and a HDCP sink device (i.e., television, monitor, etc.). An encrypted data stream is transmitted from the HDCP transmitting devices to the HDCP sink device. Before transmitting the data streams, the HDCP transmitting device authenticates with the HDCP sink device.
As one example application, HDCP is used to encrypt data streams from the HDCP transmitting devices. An HDCP version 2.2 (HDCP 2.2) sink device may include multiple input ports, each connected to a transmitting device. The HDCP sink device can decrypt an HDCP2.2 encrypted stream from the transmitting devices, but it does so by synchronizing with each of the HDCP transmitting devices using separate HDCP decrypting engines for each transmitting device. Hence, to operate with multiple transmitting devices, the HDCP sink device a corresponding number of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) engines, which is expensive to implement.